A large proportion of the commuter belt of London, Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Brussels, Rome, etc. are places like that, some nicer and some more depressing, but definitely suburbs that exist mainly to house people who commute in to the city.
It's a density issue, at heart. Any US "city" (if it should be called that) of 100K-500K occupies 10x-20x the surface area that it would in most parts of the world, removing much of the cohesion that leads us to call places cities or towns in the first place.
In response, I started compiling a list, but then I realised I can't think of a counterexample. "Any" might be just about right. Do you know of one?
I'm thinking of places like Indianapolis, Fairfax, Macon (GA), almost all college towns I've been to...
Your argument is that mid-sized US cities with densities comparable to European cities are rare, and that this causes pathology. That sounds intuitively defensible, because America definitely has more space to play with for its cities than Europe. But let's try to be specific.
What's a model European city, so we can compare its density to some set of American cities?
However, as usual, 90% of the population doesn't live in that tiny core, but instead in the same kind of low-density layout one can find anywhere in America. While I haven't been to Ann Arbor since grade six or so, my recollection is that it's similar; wonderful UMich campus, nice downtown, but most of the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area? Same old automobile folk traditions. Am I misremembering?
Re: comparing density --
Density is certainly not the only variable. In my article, I made the point about how proximity/adjacency != walking accessibility. That seems relevant, too. It's probably quite possible to build a place with a decently high density where a car is still required to go anywhere, or a relatively low-density but profoundly pedestrian-friendly hamlet.
Saline and Ypsi are suburbs of Ann Arbor.
Ann Arbor itself is mostly walkable, tree-lined, mixed-use, and connected by public transportation.
More than 90% of the population of Ann Arbor lives in Ann Arbor and not Ypsi or Saline. :)
What are the rest of the variables? I'd like to drive to specificity. If there's a set of US midsized cities that defies your characterizations, maybe there's something interesting that ties them together.
I'm certainly not going to deny that there are crappy cities!
And, I just gave you a specific example that isn't "one mixed use sounding shopping strip with attached condos".
The train to Amsterdam is better than the train to Chicago too (cheaper, faster, more frequent).
It's a bigger city than Ann Arbor, with about twice the density.
I think there are probably enough differences in land use planning that you won't quite be able to have a model city for Europe.
The point of that was that it is connected to a rail network in a way that doesn't exist in Michigan.
Also, when I lived in Ann Arbor, we never cared about going to Detroit itself.
It's a little unfair to compare that particular run to the entire state of Michigan, which would be the 20th largest country in Europe if admitted to the EU, just behind Iceland and ahead of Hungary.
(we're both making some edits)
I think the higher density is part of why Europe seems to have more nice cities though. I actually kind of joked about that while I was there, that the publicly owned land in Michigan is roughly the size of the Netherlands (the national and state forests).
With high density, if you "need" cityscape you can just build a rail to where it makes sense to have the city.
In America, any region with a population the order of 100k or less is basically a shopping area surrounded by suburbs. The same is not true in Europe.
In Europe, you can definitely find walkable, breathable, friendly cities while still living in an area that is safer than (and has a smaller population than) the typical Chicago suburban area.